2006.06.15: June 15, 2006: Headlines: COS - Togo: Writing - Togo: Salon: RPCV George Packer's "The Village of Waiting" is one of the most wrenchingly honest books ever written by a white person about Africa, a bracing antidote to romantic authenticity myths and exotic horror stories alike

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2006.06.15: June 15, 2006: Headlines: COS - Togo: Writing - Togo: Salon: RPCV George Packer's "The Village of Waiting" is one of the most wrenchingly honest books ever written by a white person about Africa, a bracing antidote to romantic authenticity myths and exotic horror stories alike

RPCV George Packer's "The Village of Waiting" is one of the most wrenchingly honest books ever written by a white person about Africa, a bracing antidote to romantic authenticity myths and exotic horror stories alike

Stationed as an English teacher in a sluggish village of the Ewe ethnicity called Laviéma (whose name, according to legend, meant "wait a little longer"), Packer found his modest optimism deteriorating into a profound alienation and cynicism over the course of 18 months. His intense friendships with his host family, with the village chief, and with his students were laced with mistrust and incomprehension. Confronted by their poverty, he felt responsible; confronted by their manipulation and dishonesty, he felt simultaneously abused and sympathetic. Ultimately, wracked by hypochondria and anxiety, he quit before his two-year Peace Corps term was up.

The wild character of this tiny West African nation is captured in a brilliant roman à clef, a wrenching Peace Corps memoir and a fascinating guide to voodoo.

By Matt Steinglass

Togo is the Zembla of West Africa: If it did not exist, it would have been invented by the author of an absurdist experimental novel, prompting generations of unwary readers to leaf through their atlases in search of the place. Indeed, some of Togo's own residents may occasionally be tempted to leaf through their atlases, to assure themselves of their own existence. How is one to account for this finger of a country tucked in between Ghana and Benin, its population of 5 million people speaking 40-odd different languages? A country that owes its existence to the off chance of having been the tiniest of Germany's short-lived African colonies, inherited by France after World War I, which absentmindedly failed to consolidate it into its other colonies? Where, until February of 2005, a general who had first seized power in 1967 still reigned, Mobutu-like, over a tribalized kleptocracy, propped up by French money and military advisors, referred to by his countrymen in hushed whispers as "le vieux." Is this place for real?

[Excerpt]

For a more realistic introduction to Togo, there's the book beloved of every Peace Corps volunteer: "The Village of Waiting" (1988), by George Packer. Packer is best known today for his superb reporting on the Iraq war for the New Yorker, which culminated in the 2005 book "The Assassins' Gate." He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in 1982-83. Stationed as an English teacher in a sluggish village of the Ewe ethnicity called Laviéma (whose name, according to legend, meant "wait a little longer"), Packer found his modest optimism deteriorating into a profound alienation and cynicism over the course of 18 months. His intense friendships with his host family, with the village chief, and with his students were laced with mistrust and incomprehension. Confronted by their poverty, he felt responsible; confronted by their manipulation and dishonesty, he felt simultaneously abused and sympathetic. Ultimately, wracked by hypochondria and anxiety, he quit before his two-year Peace Corps term was up. "The Village of Waiting" is one of the most wrenchingly honest books ever written by a white person about Africa, a bracing antidote to romantic authenticity myths and exotic horror stories alike. Isak Dinesen, Packer notes, wrote of waking in the Kenyan highlands and thinking, "Here I am, where I ought to be." He himself woke up sweating, hungry, "mildly at ease, or mildly anxious. But never where I ought to be."

When this story was posted in June 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:

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Story Source: Salon

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Togo; Writing - Togo

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